A 93-year-old Tennessee woman who cleaned the state Capitol for 30 years, including the governor's office, says she won't be able to vote for the first time in decades after being told this week that her old state ID failed to meet new voter ID regulations.

Mitchell, who was delivered by a midwife in Alabama in 1918, has never had a birth certificate. But when she told that to a drivers' license clerk, he suggested she might be an illegal immigrant.

Thelma Mitchell told WSMV-TV that she went to a state drivers' license center last week after being told that her old state ID from her cleaning job would not meet new regulations for voter identification.

A spokesman for the House Republican Caucus insisted that Mitchell was given bad information and should've been allowed to vote, even with an expired state ID. But even if that's the case, her ordeal illustrates the inevitable disenfranchisements that result when confusing voting laws enable state officials to apply the law inconsistently.

Add Mitchell's story to the rapidly growing instances of long-time voters who are now running into obstacles to voting, such as bad or confusing information in Mitchell's case, or a lack of required documentation in 96-year old fellow Tennessean Dorothy Cooper's case, or potential charges of hundreds of dollars in 84-year old Ruthelle Frank's case in Wisconsin (to name just a very few). All had simply been hoping to cast the same legal votes that they've been legally able to cast for decades --- until now.

All of this comes in the wake of Republican statehouse takeovers in 2010, after which they began to pass laws in dozens of states designed to suppress the votes of the elderly, minorities, and students, who tend to disproportionately vote for Democrats and who disproportionately lack the specific type of state-issued Photo ID now required at the polling place in order to cast their vote.

Expect to see many more such stories in the weeks and months ahead, as those of us who believe in the right to vote actually fight to assure that right may exist again some day for all constitutionally legal voters.

In the meantime, at least there was a bit of good news late last week, as the U.S. Dept. of Justice denied approval of the South Carolina GOP's new disenfranchising polling place Photo ID restriction law, finding that it would lead to racial disparity among voters, according to the state's own statistics.

That bit of encouraging news came about just after the Charlie White, the Republican Sec. of State of Indiana (the first state to institute draconian polling place Photo ID restrictions in 2008), was ordered removed from office by a Circuit Court Judge in the wake of a finding that White was illegally on the ballot in 2010, having committed voter fraud by registering to vote at a residence where he didn't actually live.

Curiously enough, however, the actual case of voter fraud by White --- the state's chief election officer, who is also facing seven criminal felony charges (three of them for voter fraud) --- was not stopped by Indiana's draconian polling place Photo ID law. Only 80 and 90-year old nuns, college students, and World War II vets, apparently, were denied their right to vote by the GOP's voter suppression laws in the Hoosier State, while scofflaws like their own Republican Sec. of State were allowed to vote (illegally) without incident.

The Dec. 26 Los Angeles Times article, written by Jim Puzzanghera and published as supposed front-page "news," typifies the type of corporate media hatchet job that has been the hallmark of corporate media deception and the source of what Prof. Noam Chomsky referred to in Failed States as the "democracy deficit" --- the significant gap between the substantive policy positions of the U.S. electorate and their elected "leaders."

Where Chomsky attributes the "democracy deficit" to the manner in which U.S. "elections are skillfully managed to avoid issues and marginalize the underlying population, freeing the elected leadership to serve the substantial people," the Puzzanghera/Times article, which seeks to marginalize Occupy Wall Street (OWS) and to obfuscate the clarity of message emerging from a candidate like Elizabeth Warren, provides a perfect example of how the corporate media aspire to manage public perceptions in their day-to-day "news" reporting as a means to preserve oligarchic control of our decaying political and economic systems.

In his Times piece, Puzzanghera manages to marginalize an entire popular uprising by misleadingly quoting from selected poll numbers, relying on the one-side-says-one-thing, but-the-other-side-says-another stenography posing as journalism, and by quoting from "experts" without bothering to offer their biased background. The Times article amounts to yet another example of how a dissembling corporate media passes off pro-corporate propaganda as "news"...

We thought it'd be a slow-ish night while guest hosting the nationally syndicated Mike Malloy Show on Christmas Eve Eve tonight. Boy were we wrong! (We'll also be filling in next Thursday and Friday, by the way.) Hope you can tune in tonight! It'll be worth it!

We'll be BradCasting LIVE 9pm-Mid ET (6p-9p PT), coast-to-coast and around the uprising, pre-Christmas globe from the studios of L.A.'s KTLK am1150 in beautiful downtown Burbank. Join us by tuning in, chatting in, Tweeting in and calling in! Our LIVE chat room will be up and rolling right here at The BRAD BLOG, as usual, while we are on the air. Please stop by and join the fun while you're listening! (The Chat Room will open at the bottom of this item a few minutes before airtime, see down below, just above "Comments" section.)

LORI COMPAS, the leading organizer of WI's "Recall Fitzgerald" campaign, demanding an apology from state Senate Majority Leader Scott Fitzgerald who inaccurately claimed that she and her fellow petitioners were committing fraud in their signature gathering efforts to have him recalled along with Gov. Scott Walker.

POST-SHOW UPDATE: It was a Christmas miracle! Nothing but good news (mostly) on the Malloy Show tonight! How often does that happen?! (Ever?) Plus some rockin' holiday music from our awesome engineer Tony Sorrentino! Lots of stuff to keep you feelin' good over the holiday weekend, all now posted below, commercial-free as our holiday gift to you! Enjoy!...

No time to detail this one for the moment, as I'm preparing to guest host the nationally-syndicated Mike Malloy Show tonight, so I'll just link to TPM's breaking coverage for the moment. I'll almost certainly have more to say on this on the show tonight, but for now, it looks like we've got still more good news this Christmas!

The Dept. of Justice has denied preclearance [PDF] of the South Carolina GOP's new polling place Photo ID restriction law, finding it was likely to disenfranchise voters, particularly minority voters, as "the state’s own statistics demonstrated that the photo identification requirement would have a much greater impact on non-white residents, DOJ said in a letter to the state on Friday," according to TPM.

The racial disparity seen by the DoJ is similar to the hardships, from such laws, to students and elderly voters (you know, the ones who tend to vote for Democrats, which is why the GOP is instituting these voter suppression laws in the first place.)

The GOP has long used the lie about an an epidemic of "voter fraud" by voter impersonation at the polling place, though they have failed to document virtually any instances of it. Nonetheless, they've been using such false claims to institute these types of laws around the country after Republicans took over a number of state legislatures in 2010. States that are covered by Section 5 of the Voting Rights Act of 1965 must receive preclearance for such laws before they can be enacted, given the history of racism in the covered jurisdictions.

The BRAD BLOG's own crack legal analyst, Ernie Canning, detailed the concerns that the DoJ had about the disenfranchising affects of the law back in September, noting that they seemed to be signaling at the time that preclearance would be unlikely, given many serious flaws in the state law.

A final decision on DoJ preclearance is still pending in Texas where the agency has also indicated they are likely to reject the new Photo ID laws. Meanwhile, in states not covered by Section 5, such as Wisconsin, it's fallen to non-governmental organizations, such as the ACLU, to challenge the new laws in the court system, as they did earlier this month.

All of this follows on Indiana's first-in-the-nation Photo ID restriction law, approved by the U.S. Supreme Court in 2008. Ironically enough, yesterday in the Hoosier State, the Republican Secretary of State Charlie White, now facing seven criminal felony counts, including three of them for voter fraud, was ordered removed from his post by a circuit court judge who found he was not eligible to vote or be on the ballot at all in 2010. The judge has ordered White be replaced by the second-highest vote-getter, Democrat Vop Osili. Our coverage of that incredible "White Christmas" story is right here.

Not to say we told ya so, but, ya know, we've been telling you so for years (and years.)

A new finding by the U.S. Election Assistance Commission --- a rare finding, first of its kind, in fact, as the woeful EAC has never before taken the time to investigate and report on serious failures of e-voting systems that it has previously blessed with federal certification --- reveals that ES&S paper ballot optical-scan systems used in a bunch of large swing states, result in machines freezing during elections, failing to log system events correctly, and, perhaps most troubling, ballots being misread and votes being lost entirely.

The paper ballot scanning computers were purchased as a replacement for the 100% unverifiable Diebold touch-screen systems used previously in Ohio's largest county, after a massive analysis of all of the state's e-voting systems, overseen by former Sec. of State Jennifer Brunner (D), revealed serious security issues and other major flaws in the touch-screen voting machines used there and in many other states.

The new findings of the failures of the ES&S op-scan system led Plain Dealer reporter/blogger Laura Johnston today to worry: "If the company can't correct the flaw, the government could decertify the machines --- leaving Cuyahoga and jurisdictions [throughout] the country no way to conduct elections in a presidential year."

Um, did the citizens of Cleveland lose their eyeballs? Or the ability to add 1 + 1 + 1, Ms. Johnston? Yes, there are other ways "to conduct elections in a presidential year." For example, one could simply count the ballots by hand in public, at the precinct, in front of all voters, all parties and video cameras, and report the results right then and there before the ballots are moved anywhere --- just as they still do in some 40% of the towns in the "First-in-the-Nation Primary" state of New Hampshire.

The flawed scanners manufactured by ES&S, the nation's largest e-voting vendor, are currently set to be used again in 2012, not only in Ohio, but also in Florida, Illinois, Indiana, Ohio, New York and Wisconsin, among others states...

This week, KPFK/Pacfica Radio here in L.A. was kind enough to allow me to expand my usual weekly show a bit for a 'War on Democracy' special over two days, as we head into 2012 with the very first votes in the Presidential Election cycle to finally be cast in just under two weeks in Iowa.

We covered both the fight for election integrity, including some of the very recent and disturbing e-voting news that we've been covering here at The BRAD BLOG of late, as well as the outrageous new GOP voter suppression laws and the push-back against it. I also had time to take some calls in the hour-long Part 1, and was joined today, in Part 2, by our own crack legal analyst Ernest Canning...

Progressive radio will be allowed to remain on our public AM airwaves in San Francisco, though with major schedule shake-ups, the removal of its popular progressive branding and several bizarre additions to the line-up, including far Rightwing extremists such as former Fox "News" phenom Glenn Beck in the place of what had been one of Green960's most popular morning shows.

The latest move in the strange back-and-forth saga follows on radio giant Clear Channel's announcement just over two weeks ago, that Green960 --- the only AM Progressive Talk Radio station on the dial in San Francisco, one of the nation's most progressive cities --- would be banished from the popular public airwaves and sent to the radio-ghetto of the little-known and even lesser-received HD2 band. Its progressive programming --- featuring the likes of popular lefty-ish talkers such as Stephanie Miller, Thom Hartmann, Randi Rhodes, Norman Goldman and Mike Malloy --- would be replaced (with the exception of Rhodes, who is syndicated by Clear Channel's Premiere Radio) by yet another so-called "conservative" talk station, featuring extremists such as Beck and other Fox "News" regulars.

The move by the media conglomerate, now owned by leading GOP Presidential candidate Mitt Romney's Bain Capital, LLC, was to occur on January 3. The move would have left Rhodes as the only progressive voice on the entire AM dial in San Francisco, as of the first business day of the new Presidential Election year.

But a funny thing happened on the way to 2012 on Bay Area talk radio...

Last night, I spoke to Thom Hartmann about the supposed threat in Iowa --- as well as the broader threat to our electoral system posed by privatized e-voting systems across the nation --- on his TV show, The Big Picture.

Thanks to the Rightwing's unshakable lock on our national media, had the Governor of Wisconsin now up for a potential recall been a Democrat, the photo above might have been among the most familiar photos in the nation this week.

However, since WI's governor Scott Walker is a Republican, this is likely the first time you've seen the photograph, or even heard that there has been yet another violent assault on a citizen petitioner seeking signatures for his recall.

This camera was three weeks old. It was stripped off of my wrist, and thrown full force into the street by a crazy rightwing bastard. The card and battery are missing, which I learned when I tried to retrieve the day's photos and video.

It includes this:

My winter coat was ripped. My camera was destroyed. My hand is badly bruised and hurts like hell. The police left after taking all of our stories, and the three of us went back to the intersection to retrieve our signs so as not to leave litter. As we walked back, a wizened old man came up his front walk and let us know how happy he was we were hurt, and how much he hated us. He drooled positively fecal invective. Another car whizzed by and gave us the finger. Earlier, a man in a passing car slowed down and pantomimed shooting at Angela with an imaginary rifle. This is life in Walker's Wisconsin. I don't see it getting any better real soon.

The story ends with the police finding the man who did it and promising criminal charges, before this thought from the person whose camera was destroyed by a political supporter of Republican Gov. Scott Walker of Wisconsin:

We don't want trouble. We don't want debates. We don't want to convince anyone of anything. We merely want to give people the opportunity to sign a legally prescribed petition derived from constitutionally defined laws whose intention is to allow redress of an aggrieved population if an elected official is off the rails.

Read the full story of what happened from "noise of rain" at dKos here. And then remind yourself how everyone in the nation would likely have heard about this incident, over and over again, days ago, had the violence in this story been carried out by a Democrat against a Republican. And keep all of that in mind next time you hear one of Andrew Breitbart and Rush Limbaugh's pathetic brainwashed zombies complaining, once again, about that dastardly biased "Liberal Media."

* * *

UPDATE 12/20/11, 11:52pm PT: The local NBC affiliate, TMJ-4 in Mequon, reveals the identity of dKos blogger "noise of rain" as Dave Hakman and reports that the man who destroyed his camera has now been arrested. Details from TMJ-4's coverage follow below...

Well, whaddaya know? Suddenly, after all these years of warnings from The BRAD BLOG that electronic voting systems are exceedingly vulnerable to manipulation by insider election officials as well as outside hackers from almost anywhere, such as China or Iran or even al Qaeda, the GOP is now worried about electronic vote hacking in their Iowa Caucuses on January 3rd.

"Their fear," as AP reports today, is triggered by little more than a two-minute video posted on the Internet in early November, purportedly created by the "hacktivist" collective known as Anonymous, calling on members, in a trademark computer-generated voice, to "peacefully shut down the first-in-the-nation Iowa caucuses." [The complete video is posted at the end of this article.]

Progressive radio and television host Thom Hartmann covered the AP story on his radio show this morning, suggesting that while the GOP may have concerns about Anonymous shutting down or manipulating the results of the Iowa caucuses, they may also attempt to use the opportunity of heightened security to ensure that Republican candidate Ron Paul is not named the winner. A poll released last night by Public Policy Polling (PPP) shows Paul vaulting into the lead in Iowa, as previous front-runner Newt Gingrich's numbers have collapsed in the Hawkeye State. Paul now leads over Romney in Iowa, according to PPP's poll, with 23%, followed by Romney at 20% and Gingrich at 14%.

According to AP's report, the GOP is now concerned about "an Iowa caucus marred by hackers who corrupt the database used to gather votes and crash the website used to inform the public about results that can shape the campaign for the White House."

They go on to report that "Experts in computer security said such concerns are valid."

Unfortunately, however, it appears as though the steps the GOP are planning to take to try and counter the threat will do little ensure the public can trust the results that the party eventually reports to the public. (In the Iowa Caucuses, party officials, rather than state election officials, tally and report results to the media and public.)

If Republicans in Iowa, or anywhere else for that matter, truly fear the manipulation of results, there is only one way to help make such manipulation as difficult as possible. Similarly, if supporters of Ron Paul are concerned about same --- and they have every good reason to be, particularly considering the well-documented history of vote manipulation by supporters of Mitt Romney in the past --- they ought to be calling for the very same solution to help ensure the integrity of results in Iowa (and, frankly, everywhere else) in 2012...

We're drafted into duty tonight, once again, to guest host the nationally syndicated Mike Malloy Show! (We'll also be filling in next Friday and the Thursday and Friday after that.) Hope you can join us tonight!

As usual, we'll be BradCasting LIVE 9pm-Mid ET (6p-9p PT), coast-to-coast and around the uprising globe from the studios of L.A.'s KTLK am1150 in beautiful downtown Burbank. Join us by tuning in, chatting in, Tweeting in and calling in! Our LIVE chat room will be up and rolling right here at The BRAD BLOG, as usual, while we are on the air. Please stop by and join the fun while you're listening! (The Chat Room will open at the bottom of this item a few minutes before airtime, see down below, just above "Comments" section.)

Scheduled tonight (so far):

LOTS TO CATCH UP ON! I've got too many stories and not enough time to list them all here. But we'll try to get the stories straight on everything from the Budget Compromise (heading to a deadline tonight), the controversial NDAA bill, the nonsense on the Keystone XL pipeline from last night's idiotic GOP Debate on Fox "News" to a bevy of voting and election related stories, from the Recall Walker effort in WI to the amazing story of Venango County, PA's disturbing discoveries from their landmark forensic analysis of their 100% unverifiable ES&S touch-screen voting systems! We'll also have the latest news on whether Clear Channel will allow progressive Green960 to stay on our public airwaves in San Francisco.

A FEW FRIENDS Our own DESI DOYEN of the Green News Report will be joining us to sort some of this all out! And we'll also be checking in for a special simulcast with Thom Hartmann's producer JACOB DEAN, host of Filter Free Radio and one of many hosts from Nicole Sandler's RadioOrNot.com network's 24-hour OccuThon, kicking off tonight in support of the Occupy Wall Street movement!

PLUS! Your calls over your public airwaves at 877-520-1150 and your tweets to @TheBradBlog!...

POST-SHOW UPDATE: Tonight's show flew by! At least for me. Buckle up and see if it does for you as well! The commercial-free audio archives (as well as the chat room archives) are now posted below! Enjoy!...

[UPDATE 12/21/11: Confirmation that Clear Channel will keep most of its progressive programming on the AM airwaves in San Francisco --- though with some bizarre changes --- is now detailed here...]

The only progressive AM talk radio station, Green960, in one of the nation's most progressive cities, San Francisco, may be allowed to stay on the public airwaves after all in the 2012 Presidential Election year!

Last week we detailed corporate radio giant Clear Channel's plans to remove Green960 (call letters KKGN) from the AM dial and send it to the radio ghetto otherwise known as "HD2," a band that requires a special receiver that very few people actually own. Adding insult to injury, the 960 spot on the AM dial would be replaced with Glenn Beck and other Rightwing talkers from Clear Channel's "conservative" talk station "Fox News Radio KNEW" which is currently on 910, but would move to the 960 frequency.

In the 910 slot, Clear Channel had planned to launch a new talk station, which would also include some Fox talkers, branded as "San Francisco's Talk 910 KKSF."

If plans move ahead as previously announced, the end result would be that --- except for progressive talker Randi Rhodes, who is syndicated by Clear Channel's syndication arm Premier Broadcasting and who would be allowed to keep her live Noon-3p PT slot on both the new KNEW 960, as well as the "HD2" schedule where the current Green960 line-up would be sent to --- there would be no progressive AM talk station on the air in San Francisco.

The entire shuffle was set to occur at the beginning of the 2012 Presidential Election year on January 3rd, a move that had raised at least a few eyebrows, as Clear Channel is now owned by the Mitt Romney-founded venture capital firm, Bain Capital LLC.

Well, now that entire plan, according to one industry website and several insider sources I've spoken to today, may be on hold and Green960's popular line-up of progressive talkers like Rhodes, Stephanie Miller, Thom Hartmann, Norman Goldman, Mike Malloy (for whom I am a regular guest-host, including on tonight's show), and others may be allowed to stay on the AM air after all!...

Election laws in Wisconsin are not covered by Section 5 of the federal Voting Rights Act, which would otherwise require the Dept. of Justice or a federal panel of judges to "preclear" such laws to assure they are not discriminatory. Thus, it falls to non-governmental organizations, such as the American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU), to take legal action in hopes of protecting Constitutional voting rights for citizens of the Badger State.

That's exactly what the organization did this week, in filing a 54-page federal complaint on behalf of some 17 named plaintiffs --- including elderly, student, minority and even veteran voters --- who may well be unable to cast their once-legal vote under the state's new voter suppression bill passed earlier this year by its GOP legislature and signed into law by its Republican Gov. Scott Walker.

The lead plaintiff in Frank vs. Walker [PDF], the ACLU's class action lawsuit filed in the U.S. District Court for the Eastern District, seeking to halt enforcement of the state's new photo ID voting restrictions, is 84-year old Ruthelle Frank.

As we previously reported, Frank has been a lawful resident of Brokaw, WI since her home birth in 1927. Although she has voted in every election since 1948 and is an elected member of the Brokaw Village Board, she learned that she may be barred from voting come February 2012 because she lacks one of the official photo IDs mandated by that state's new vote-suppressing photo ID law.

She was born at home, without a birth certificate, and will be forced to pay $20 to get one in order to get her supposedly "free" ID to vote. But even that may not be enough. Frank recently learned she may not be able to comply with the state GOP's Photo ID restriction unless she coughs up upwards of $200 to amend the Register of Deeds record of her home, which had misspelled her maiden name.

The feisty octogenarian, however, was not about to quietly accept this assault on a right she had exercised without interference for the past 63 years (see a video interview with her below), and so she agreed to lead the ACLU suit.

The ACLU complaint, however, may serve to be larger than just the 17 voters (and thousands of others included as part of 6 different classes) in the state of Wisconsin. If it succeeds, the lawsuit could have national implications that would go well beyond the question of who gets to vote in Wisconsin in the 2012 Presidential election. The case could serve to reverse the bevy of voter-suppression laws being enacted by Republicans in state after state in the wake of their take-over of statehouses across the nation in November of 2010...

Frustrating. I spent much of the day prepping for my KPFK/Pacifica Radio show today, only to get to the station this afternoon to find out we were on a last minute, emergency fund drive this week, so my show was preempted, but I didn't get the message (literally).

Had planned to do a long overdue War on Voting update, as I haven't gotten to cover elections much on the show for months. Had prepared to discuss everything from AG Eric Holder's speech on voting rights issues at the LBJ Library in Austin (who knew we even had an AG?!); to Ohio voters putting the kibosh on GOP voter suppression laws going into effect next year to 96-year old Dorothy Cooper now unable to vote in TN under the GOP's new voter suppression laws there; to 84-year old Ruthelle Frank told she may have to pay $200 to vote in WI under the GOP's new voter suppression laws there; to the ACLU's new federal lawsuit against Gov. Scott Walker and the GOP's voter-suppression laws in WI; to the League of Women Voters state suit against same; to the jackass Jeffery Karnitz in WI recently arrested after defacing 'Recall Walker' petitions; to our Special Report this week on the battle for election integrity in Venango County, PA and the unexplained "remote access" on "multiple occasions" found, via a forensic investigation, to have taken place on their ES&S e-voting systems during recent elections (and the attempt by ES&S and the County Commissioners to spike that investigation by the county Board of Elections.)

What a show that coulda been!

The bad news: I couldn't do it today at KPFK for the aforementioned reason. The good news: Mike Malloy has asked me, at the last-ish minute, to guest host his show this Friday night! So today's show prep for KPFK will be delivered to Malloy listeners on Friday instead!

Relatedly, I'll also be in for Mike next Friday (before XMas weekend) and the Thursday and Friday thereafter (before New Years weekend). As usual, we'll have LIVE listening streams and chat rooms here during the show each night that I'm guest hosting, 6p-9p PT / 9p-Mid ET, so I hope you'll join us! Especially since it'll be our last few nights on our Clear Channel affiliate, Green960 in San Francisco, before the only progressive AM talk station on the air in one of the nation's most liberal cities disappears from our public airwaves!

For now, anyway, these things are all First World Problems. Though only as long as we remain a First World Nation. Given the way things are going, that is no longer a safe bet for much longer...